Misrepresented, Mistreated and Misunderstood…a sermon on 5/18/2011 on Acts 14

 

MISREPRESENTED, MISTREATED, & MISUNDERSTOOD

`Acts 14

 ¹ Now it happened in Iconium that they went together to the synagogue of the Jews, and so spoke that a great multitude both of the Jews and of the Greeks believed. ² But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brethren. ³ Therefore they stayed there a long time, speaking boldly in the Lord, who was bearing witness to the word of His grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.
⁴ But the multitude of the city was divided: part sided with the Jews, and part with the apostles. ⁵ And when a violent attempt was made by both the Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to abuse and stone them, ⁶ they became aware of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding region. ⁷ And they were preaching the gospel there.

   
⁸ And in Lystra a certain man without strength in his feet was sitting, a cripple from his mother's womb, who had never walked. ⁹
This man heard Paul speaking. Paul, observing him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed, ¹⁰ said with a loud voice, "Stand up straight on your feet!" And he leaped and walked. ¹¹ Now when the people saw what Paul had done, they raised their voices, saying in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!" ¹² And Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. ¹³ Then the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of their city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, intending to sacrifice with the multitudes.

¹⁴ But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard this, they tore their clothes and ran in among the multitude, crying out ¹⁵ and saying, "Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them, ¹⁶ who in bygone generations allowed all nations to walk in their own ways. ¹⁷ Nevertheless He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." ¹⁸ And with these sayings they could scarcely restrain the multitudes from sacrificing to them.

   
¹⁹ Then Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there; and having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. ²⁰ However, when the disciples gathered around him, he rose up and went into the city. And the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.

   
²¹ And when they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, ²² strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, "We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God." ²³ So when they had appointed elders in every church, and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed. ²⁴ And after they had passed through Pisidia, they came to Pamphylia. ²⁵ Now when they had preached the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia. ²⁶ From there they sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had completed.
²⁷ Now when they had come and gathered the church together, they reported all that God had done with them, and that He had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. ²⁸ So they stayed there a long time with the disciples.

SERMON

I vaguely remember my first two sermons, though I really work hard to repress them. My first sermon I ever preached was at Ebenezer United Methodist Church at Lyons, KS. It was the spring of 1994, and I was a junior in college. The pastor of the church was a part-time associate pastor at First United Methodist in Lyons, and also the pastor of Ebenezer church. I worked for her staffing the children's ministry for their Wednesday night program, and for some reason she decided to give me a shot in preaching my first sermon.

Ebenezer was one of these churches that really was out in the middle of nowhere. You headed two or three miles north of town, turned down a couple of roads, and pulled up to this church in the middle of fields of milo and wheat. It would be like having to find a sanctuary for a church out at Keith Doak's house when you had never really been off Hwy 50 and Main Street when visiting Fowler.

I remember having some corny jokes about being from Alaska to start the sermon that went well, and a lot of handwritten notes. And I had this dollar store paper, no lines, like you would buy for children to color on. The sermon was on I Kings 19. Elijah and the still, small voice.

I survived the whole experience. I had a friend that went with me to support me. Actually an ex-girlfriend that had broken up with me a little bit earlier that spring. She told me it was good. I shudder to think about how awful that first message was 17 years ago.

The second sermon I preached was at my home church, which was First Baptist Church of Sterling, KS. It was a cozy church of about 40 in a town of about 2000 with a part-time pastor. At that church I decided to preach on Hebrews 11. I was so excited about it. And I had this wonderful little church of seniors and a few young families who had adopted me and spoiled me like crazy. I think I could have had drool running down my face and stuttered through the whole thing and they would have been supportive.

The pastor of the church called me back to greet people at the entryway as they left the church. Everybody found something specific to encourage me about. I was on cloud 9. Then one of the little old ladies trickled out. It was not one of the women in the church I was close to.

She said, "I have to tell you," she said, "that message changed my life!"

My chest puffed out, "It did? How is that?"

She said, "After hearing that message on taking a leap of faith for the Lord. I am going to join the Kansas militia party and do as much as I can to financially support them."

My jaw hit the floor. "That wasn't what I really intended…uhhh…what I was really trying to say was…"

This was at the time when the Branch Davidian compound had just been burned down in Waco as the ATF was performing police actions against this dangerous cult. It was the time when all the hubbub about the freemen was just getting started in Montana. And she said she was going to join the militia.

"As they say…the Lord works in mysterious ways…this message made everything clear for me," she said. Then she quickly stepped into her car parked in front of the church, and that was last I remember seeing her.

About a year later a member of the Kansas Militia made quite a name for himself. His name was Timothy McViegh. He and a friend rigged up a u-haul with a bomb, took that u-haul down to Oklahoma City, and decimated a federal building. Between 150 and 200 people were killed. More injured. It was the most deadly terrorist attack on US soil before 9/11. And a year before that, my sermon, designed to spur people on to deeper commitment to their church and their faith, led one woman to join this organization.

So, when I hear about Paul and Barnabas in Acts 14 I am strangely comforted. Because it seems that in one sense, God is blessing them in their ministry journey. And, at the same time, they are constantly misunderstood, misrepresented, and mistreated by those around them.

You have a rather simple, crude map on the front of your bulletin of this journey they are on. We have discussed a little bit of the journey. In Acts 14 we read about Paul and Barnabas' ministry in Iconium. There they go to the synagogue first, and begin to win a number of people to the Way of Jesus. But as their ministry begin to bear fruit, the encounter opposition. Some folks began twisting their words and starting rumors against them. They continue to contend for the truth. Then an alliance of Greek and Jewish leaders look to assassinate Paul and Barnabas. So they are forced to head down the road.

The next city their ministry takes them to is the community of Lystra. Paul and Barnabas begin to preach and teach there, and they receive a favorable response. At one point as they are teaching they see a man longing for healing, and through the power of the Holy Spirit they heal him. He had been crippled from birth, and now he is jumping up and walking. But this work of compassion and grace has unintended consequences.

You see, according to Greek mythology recorded by Ovid, there was a time when Zeus and Hermes came to visit the valley that Lystra was in disguised as average folks. And they spent some days there, but nobody was hospitable to them. Except for one elderly couple. So, Zeus and Hermes took this elderly couple to the top of a peak overlooking the whole valley, and then they flooded the whole valley and killed everyone in it. They then gave all the land to the old folks that welcomed them and cared for them.

So when Paul and Barnabas healed this crippled man, began to talk about Jesus being God in human form, they quickly began to think that Paul and Barnabas were actually Zeus and Hermes visiting them again. And they became anxious. They thought that Barnabas, being older, was Zeus. And Paul, being the speaker of the group, was Hermes, the messenger of the gods. They started bringing garlands to put on them, and they began to prepare to sacrifice animals to them in worship of Zeus and Hermes

As you can imagine, this is not good news to Paul and Barnabas, who were trying to lead people to Jesus. So these people are scurrying around, attempting to worship Paul and Barnabas. Paul and Barnabas are trying to keep them from completely missing the point. They tear their clothes, which is a sign of grief, and begin to tell people more about God.

Paul and Barnabas begin telling the people about the God of the Bible. They tell them that God is the one who made heaven and earth, the oceans and everything in them. Paul and Barnabas insist that they are just men. That God is the one that blesses them with rain, and food in their seasons, and the food they eat, and that gives them joy in their hearts. And that the God who showed himself through all of these things now wants them to know the good news that Jesus brings. They tell people this long enough that they barely keep them from sacrificing to them that day.

They were misunderstood. Paul and Barnabas were completely misunderstood. And it wasn't their fault. The people lived in a fear mentality, and they just reacted when they saw a miracle of God. Paul and Barnabas were simply misunderstood. The people of God are always misunderstood.

Soon after the people who wanted him dead in Iconium make their way to Lystra. They convince the people of Lystra to try and kill Paul and Barnabas. They end up stoning Paul, and leave him for dead. Paul gets up a few hours later, after they assumed he died, and he goes back into town and continues to minister.

They were mistreated. The people of God are always mistreated.

The Bible says that after a little more ministry they go back through all the cities where they had ministered before. Cities where they were misrepresented, mistreated, and misunderstood. And they build up the church in those towns, and they set up leadership, and then they slowly make their way home.

And as they encouraged the believers, they told them, "We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God."

Which is a real bummer! Who wants to hear that? I know I do not.

But it is what the Bible says.

Follow Jesus. If you do, you will see miracles happen. You will be blessed beyond imagination. Your life will matter. Your life with have focus, and purpose, and meaning. You will find eternal life through Jesus. And you will live a faithful, true, beautiful life here on earth.

But….

Follow Jesus, and you will also be misunderstood, mistreated, and misrepresented. You will face tribulation and hardship.

These things are two sides of the same coin. The Christian life is a life of blessing. Jesus can fill that hole in your heart that nothing else could fill. You follow Jesus with all your heart, and you will all of the sudden find your life being fuller, more powerful, deeper than you ever thought it could have. Before you were just kind of surviving, trying to make it day to day. Now, with Jesus you will begin to feel like you are really living.

But that kind of life threatens and confuses people. All of the sudden there begins to be something different about your life, your attitude, your likes and dislikes, your priorities as you grow closer to Jesus. And people will begin to wonder about you. They might even worry about you.

This is because the way of blessing and truth is always misunderstood and misrepresented. That is why Jesus called it the narrow way.

In the world of ministerial leadership there is an author named Edwin Friedman. The book that he wrote right before he died is called A Failure of Nerve. In it he sees church congregations functioning like large families. And he says in these families there are challenges to leading them. One of the things that he points out is that a leader should expect tribulation and sabotage. The ability of the leader to lead will depend on the leader's ability to withstand sabotage and attacks on their leadership. If you are truly leading, he says, you will experience this. And if you are always seeking to please everyone, and caving to sabotage and attacks, than you will never help your congregation get stronger and grow. But if you have the nerve to accept dissent, not take it personally, weather the storm, see it as part of the process and continue to press on through the pain and discomfort, you will find yourself leading a happier and healthier congregation.

Let me share how you can expand this to apply to your life. You have a choice. Cave to having a life of making everyone happy. And find that you have really never done much meaningful. And you never really find you. You are just a slave to everyone else's expectations.

Or, expect hardship and tribulation as part of the journey, have the courage to face it and push through it, see God work in the midst of it, and then began to see the results of the kingdom life on the other side of the hard stuff.

Too often we want to sell Jesus like a shady businessman sells home appliances on a late-night infomercial. You know the guys that try and convince you to buy their little contraption your life will be so much better. And then the keep saying, "but wait, there's more". But they don't inform you on the full price. So you pay twice as much as the product costs in shipping and handling. Pretty soon you are broke with some juicer than you used once, but it was not really all that easy to use or clean, so its sits in storage in your basement somewhere.

As Christians we can be guilty of selling people on Jesus by trying to convince them that if they accept Christ that they will never experience hard times again, that all of the sudden all of their problems will be solved without much effort. That somehow Jesus will make everything easy.

We can tell that God is telling us the truth in the book of Acts. You accept Jesus you will have eternal life. You will have a new family and a new community. You will have a life that is fuller, richer, and more meaningful than you could ever imagine. When you follow Jesus, you find something that is truly worth living for, and truly worth dying for.

But Luke is honest enough to say this. Anything true, and anything worth doing is going to have hardship and challenges. So you need to be strong and courageous, and embrace those challenges as opportunities for growth and blessing. Don't be afraid when hard times come, thinking they somehow prove your faith wrong. Your faith will be proved as you face those hard times with the strength of Christ holding you up, building you up, giving you strength, and helping you overcome.

Being misunderstood, mistreated, and misrepresented is a badge of honor. It is not a sign of failure.

 

So if your faith is causing people to ask questions, to make up stories about you, or wonder why you are a little different, good for you! Keep it up. Don't give up. You are not failing in your faith. You may be right where God wants you!

My concern, though, is that many of us may not be misunderstood, mistreated, misrepresented, or look strange at all. My concern for many of you, and the church around the world, is that many of us are not committed to following Christ in such a way that we look any different than anyone else in the world.

My friends, coming to church is not going to make you a follower of Jesus anymore than walking into a garage is going to make you a car. You can show up here every Sunday, and die and go straight to hell for eternity because you haven't given your life to Christ.

There are many of us, I believe, that give lip service to being a Christian, but it doesn't make its way into our everyday lives.

Tell me, how much time to do spend serving others compared to how much time you spend watching television?

Tell me, how much money do spend on entertainment in comparison to how much money you give to the church or to charity?

Tell me, how much time do you spend in prayer and Bible study compared to how much time you spend text messaging and surfing the internet?

Tell me, do you tell the truth even when it costs you?

If you were put on trial for being a believer in Jesus, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Would your neighbors be able to look at your life, and say the way you live is anything resembling what Jesus would be like.

Over a hundred years ago, a man wrote a book about a pastor and a small congregation in the fictional small town of Raymond. The book was called, "In His Steps".

The story begins as the pastor has a person come to his door, as a homeless person, seeking assistance on a Friday night. The pastor listens to his plea, curtly dismisses him, and shuts the door in his face. The man shows up on Sunday, comes to the front of the church during the closing hymn, and politely and matter of factly confronts the church for their lack of compassion, and the community as a whole. As he finishes speaking he collapses in the church. He dies a few days later.

This shakes his church to the core. The next week, the pastor challenges his congregation. He asks them for the next year to not do anything without asking, "What would Jesus do?" The rest of the book documents the blessings and hardships of this difficult commitment.

Today, I have the same challenge to you. Only I am asking you, from now until the end of the month, would you have the courage to do your best not to do anything without first asking, "What would Jesus do?" Would you be willing to face the hardships and challenges that presents? You might look different. You might be misunderstood. Truth be told though, I don't think you'll be the same.